Nordic Sound Bite - challenged Londoners to experiment with their taste buds at the Ja Ja Ja Festival

As a special feature at the Nordic Ja Ja Ja Festival in London in November, the audience was introduced to a new food concept: Nordic Sound Bite. Three emerging Nordic food designers were selected by an open call to interpret the musical DNA of five of the bands from the Ja Ja Ja line-up – Mew, NONONO, Sin Fang, Sakaris and Kid Astray - using Nordic tastes and inventive food design, and experienced live at the concerts.

PHOTOS: www.facebook.com/NordicSoundBite

A cross-collaboration between two creative fields

Nordic Sound Bite is a pilot project initiated by New Nordic Food’s Food & Creative Industries. The idea is to explore how these two creative fields, food and music, can be mingled in a way that raises the audience’s experience to new heights. The concept has been developed in co-operation with designer and curator Nikolaj Danielsen (DK) to be presented for the first time at the Ja Ja Ja Festival.
“We want to introduce food as a central and integrated part of the musical experience. And the shortest distance between the two is if you translate the sound into a physical bite – a Nordic Sound Bite”, says Danielsen.

Nordic Sound Bite can be described as the ultimate collaboration between music and food. It could be any shape, design or character. The bands were asked to deliver 20 seconds of what they find is their ultimate DNA sound. It could be a riff, a part of a song or a combination of songs. We wanted them to make a choice: “This is what we sound like,” Danielsen explains.

Nordic Sound Bites at the festival:
MEW – a sharable lollipop: “Share Me”
SIN FANG – a pop’ rocking’ drink: “Wild Flower”
NONONO – 3 x Spray bottles: “Pump & Pass On”
SAKARIS – white balloons + dots of meringues: “Dream on!”
Kid Astray – a skyr cream with horseradish and cavi-art: “Fresh”

An intense design process

To figure out how to merge music and food into a Nordic Sound Bite, the designers Ayhan Aydin (SE), Hafdis Sunna Hermannsdottir (IS) and Josefin Vargö (SE) met for the first time at a workshop in Copenhagen a couple of weeks before the festival.
“The design process for Nordic Sound Bite was very short, intense and creative. It worked amazingly well thanks to the open teamwork. Due to time constraints we did not hesitate in our ideas and we were able to follow our intuition by taking quick but concrete decisions that actually enhanced the creative process. When you consider that several thousand people have experienced and enjoyed our creations you realize what an amazing productive process we have undergone. To interpret Nordic Sound Bite today feels like a completely natural and obvious thought,” says Josefin Vargö, one of the three designers.

Food experiences as added value

The response has been overwhelmingly positive from the audience, the bands and in reviews. We have also had great feedback about how the idea added a real sense of occasion to the event. Some comments and reviews:
• “What might prove to be JaJaJa’s key to success is the non-musical stuff; a fantastic selection of films, the record fair, the strange culinary freebies (….)”. http://bit.ly/1dPEROz
• “Ja Ja Ja may showcase a wealth of top-notch musical talent, but it’s the extras that really stand out. Alongside an exciting selection of films from the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival –(….)- are wonderfully quirky freebies like the Nordic Sound Bite experience.” http://bit.ly/1ipsMmW
• “Weird and wonderful food and some eclectic music set the tone” and "As a ‘culinary interpretation of the DNA of sound’ the team at Ja Ja Ja forced us to experiment with our taste buds." http://bit.ly/1bVPYV2
• Sin Fang describes the bitterness of the beetroot working against the pop rocks as the “best way to experience” his music. http://bit.ly/1jFwjv1
• “Loving @sakaris & not just cos they flooded us with balloons covered with sweets to go with their super sweet Scandinavian pop #jajajafest”. Check the Twitter flow out here: http://bit.ly/1dbPn6E

A range of innovative cuisines and food experiences were offered during the Ja Ja Ja Festival in collaboration with New Nordic Food: http://jajajamusic.com/festival/ja-ja-ja-festival-programme-food/

For more information:
Nordic Sound Bite at Ja Ja Ja Festival, London: http://nynordiskmad.org/tema/mat-kreativa-naeringar/food-music-nordic-sound-bite-london-2013/
Elisabet Skylare, Project Manager Food and Creative Industries, New Nordic Food II, elisabet@skylare.com